How To Survive High School

As we all know, there are thousands of books out there telling you how to fix your own plumbing, get ahead in business, buy a used car, get laid, grow better house plants, and so on. These books are very useful, especially if you happen to have bad plumbing, need a promotion, are looking for a good used car, suffer from unrequited love, or have a lot of dead house plants on your hands. Useful as they are, though, most of 'em are written for older people who have jobs, plumbing and houses. What value are these books to the average high school student in America?

It's clear that what's needed is a book aimed at those of you who are still teenagers struggling with what everybody acknowledges is the most trying and difficult time in a person's life, i.e., the four (or more!) years a kid spends in an American high school.

You guys need a book that deals with the reality of being a teenager in high school today, a book that pulls no punches and doesn't beat around the well-known bush with a lot of bullshit designed to hoodwink you into believing the kind of pap usually provided by people who have a vested interest in deceiving you. In other words, you need this book.

It happens that there is not a more qualified person in the country to write such a book than this author. I'm retired from Cody High School after spending more than thirty years teaching in this and other high schools in the city of Detroit where education is at its most challenging.

While I've seen school at its worst and dealt with every form of madness imaginable, I must admit that I've had little experience with so-called good schools where real students attend classes regularly and do their homework religiously and have unblemished complexions. Accordingly, this book is necessarily written from a point of view provided by working with armed and dangerous students, seriously befuddled teachers, half-witted and usually incompetent administrators, unstable parents, and a central board of education inhabited entirely by lunatics and fatuous dopes.

The opinions are my own, the advice practical, the incidents real. If you're in high school now or are planning to go to high school any time soon, or if you have kids in high school and want the inside dope on what's going on there, this book is for you. It may well mean the difference between surviving the whole experience in one piece and being crushed under the churning feet of the varsity football squad because you didn't know enough to get the hell out of the way. So this is for high-schoolers everywhere.

It helps to know the enemy. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say. Find out what makes 'em tick, how they think, where they're coming from, and you'll have that crucial edge needed to survive in the harsh world of high school. Okay, where do teachers come from? They come from the middle class, that's where, and they're dripping with middle-class values. Teachers are against almost everything you think is fun, mostly because it's a lot of stuff they're no longer interested in themselves or because it's stuff they can no longer do. For example, they're against beer drinking, hooky playing, dope smoking, getting laid, loitering, original hair styles, slang, and all those things that take the dreariness out of life and make the whole business more tolerable. And they're determined that you won't do any of these things, either, at least not if they have anything to say about it.

The real problem is, of course, that most teachers are old-timers, people of another generation who never do see eye to eye with teenagers. This is especially true nowadays since most of the younger teachers were fired in the last several years when enrollments declined as they did. Only old duffers kept their jobs and old people tend to be conservative and cynical because they've seen the world as it really is while young people are hopeful and optimistic because they haven't. As long as you have this generation gap, you'll have trouble between ' em.

Anyway, nature has decreed the rivalry and you're stuck with it. Your only chance is to outsmart 'em, and to do that you'll need to use your head for something besides a hat rackÑa feat not easily accomplished by most people. We'll begin by taking a closer look at the aforementioned old-timers, a group conveniently divided into (a) senile old bats and (b) sharp, eagle-eyed old pros who ask no quarter and give none. It's easy to tell 'em apart: one is sane and the other obviously isn't.

The senile old bats include teachers of assorted races, creeds, and sexes, and are not restricted to female old bats even though they outnumber the men because there are more women teachers generally. Most of 'em have been teaching since World War II. Some of 'em were half-mad from the start while others were driven mad by the systemÑthe very same system that's driving you mad, I might add.

If you're looking for the easy way out, sign up for the classes taught by the senile old bats. You won't have to do any work in their classes because they'll never ask you to. They spend twenty minutes taking attendance and trying to establish some order (something they never succeed in doing) and the rest of the period mucking about with some formless lesson designed to kill the remaining time. Since senile old bats are delighted when you do anything at all, it's easy to hand in a few copied assignments and a recycled book report and end up with an easy A or B.

You won't learn a damn thing in these classes, of course, but you won't do anything, either. A lot of jocks and bikers show up with the senile old bats, and all the thugs and hooky players, too. The only problem you'll have is trying to get a seat in these classes as they tend to fill up early. A further consideration, of course, is that you'll spend the entire semester surrounded by some of the lowest IQs in Christendom and suffer nausea trying to breathe air polluted by the presence of bikers, a group widely known for being unfamiliar with soap. The second group of old-timers, the sharp, eagle-eyed old pros, are a different story altogether. These old bats have been around as long as their senile colleagues, but the resemblance ends there. These dudes are old-timers who've kept their wits about them and actually gotten sharper over the years. Everybody in school knows who they are; their reputations precede 'em. Everybody wants to avoid their classes if at all possible because these teachers will fail your ass and everybody knows it. Many a kid has suffered the humiliation of being ordered off the stage at graduation time when one of these guys showed up with the last minute results of his final exam.

The old pros were good teachers when they were younger and they still are. They're tough disciplinarians, they don't put up with any crap. If you wrong 'em, they'll pursue you to the ends of the Earth to see justice done. They run their classes with an iron fist and scowl a lot. They demand that you work like hell and they'll flunk you every time if you don't.

If you're actually interested in learning something, these are the teachers to take. And don't worry, there's always plenty of room in their classes.

Now that you've had a brief opening glimpse of the people who run the place and have the most to do with your overall ruin, you need to direct your attention to a matter that will cause you more trouble than any other in your high school career: exams and the attendant grades that accompany 'em. There are only a few kinds of basic formal examinations found in the average high school, and you need to take a close look at all of them.

The first of these is the classic essay exam. This one is good for people who know how to write because that's what is required on this kind of test. You're given a question to answer on some general topic and you have to fill up three or four pages in answering it.

You don't actually have to know the answer, of course, and that's the beauty of this kind of test. All you have to do is come up with enough bullshit that's even loosely connected with the subject under discussion and you pass. Use jargon where possible. If it's a history exam use terms related to this field such as circa, sixteenth-century, white man's burden, imperialism, and so on. Make up fictional sources and quote 'em; if your teacher's like most she's had a marginal education and won't know the difference.

One ruse that works like a charm is to use barely legible handwriting, a device easy for most of you since the average high school student today already has handwriting that defies deciphering. There's nothing teachers hate more than struggling to figure out what the hell the kid has written. In fact, most teachers would rather give you the benefit of the doubt than go blind trying to analyze your writing and this bit of knowledge can save your ass if you play it right.

For instance, suppose you're given one of those fill in the blank tests where a word is missing and you're required to supply it. Let's say the question is, "The first message sent by the newly invented telegraph was, 'What hath God ___________?'" Okay, suppose you remember it started with a w or an r but you can't come up with the exact word. All you do is right something like wroshern or rowrusa or even wassefnr in letters that closely resemble Egyptian hieroglyphics and the teacher will give up and mark it right out of sheer desperation.

But what if she decides to mark it wrong anyway? In that case, you immediately take your paper up for a rehearing and demand that you wrote wrought and you want credit, by God. If you're firm enough and refuse to back down, the beleaguered teacher will invariably give in and mark it right just to get you to shut the hell up and give her some goddam peace.

So essay exams have their good points, but only if you can write. If you can't write, or if you write no better than about eighty-percent of the population as a whole, you're better off looking for teachers who are known to give so-called objective-type exams such as the above mentioned fill in the blank tests, the kind that don't require you to write more than two or three words at a time.

The true-false test is the ultimate objective exam. Teachers love this kind of test because it's so easy to correct. They just slap a key on the damn thing and count up all the correct answers. (Some teachers prefer to count all the errors but that always takes longerÑat least it does at Cody.) These exams will surely continue to be popular as long as a lot of your teachers are lazy, i.e., forever.

True-false exams are guessing games. Even the school half-wit can get fifty percent right if he can just smuggle a coin into the exam. Heads it's A, tails B. The law of averages works in your favor. And if you've done any studying at all you're bound to know a few of the answers going in, an advantage which, coupled with the fifty-percent figure, will enable you to pass any given true-false test.

Another objective test is the multiple-choice one, an exam offering four or more choices on each question. These tests are somewhat harder than true-false ones and require more thought. For one thing, pure guessing will get you a score of twenty-five percent and that's not a passing score even at Cody where we usually passed everyone with good attendance. It's clear that you need to do more than merely guess on a multiple-choice test.

Well, you can. Most multiple-choice tests have at least one answer in the four provided that's obviously wrong. For example, consider this question on an American history test:

Q. The man known as The Father of Our Country was
a. Thomas Edison
b. Benjamin Franklin
c. Oliver Cromwell
d. George Washington

Okay. Let's assume you don't know the answerÑin most cases a safe assumptionÑbut you do recognize at least three of those names. Since it's pretty likely you would recognize the name of the Father of our Country if you saw it and you don't recognize this Cromwell dude, you can eliminate answer C. Now you've narrowed it down to three choices and considerably increased your chances of guessing right, but you're not done yet.

There's a good chance Edison's name will ring a bell somewhere since he's a rather famous scientist and has his name on all those light bulbs and electric light companies and whatnot. It's also pretty likely that a guy who was so busy inventing electricity and building light bulb factories all over the place didn't have time to go around fathering countries on the side, so you can safely eliminate him, too. That means you have only two names left and even if you still don't have the faintest idea which one is right at least you've narrowed the choice down to fifty/fifty and turned the whole thing into another true-false test.

So there you have it. Understanding these basic exams will help you to be one of the survivors and get the hell out of high school alive.

NB - Science tests where they ask you to identify two hundred different chemicals or math tests where you have to work out intricate problems to arrive at an answer are another matter altogether and require extreme measures. (See Grades- Cheating.)

It's true what they say, that the world really does run on bullshit, and grades are a part of all that. Nobody is interested in talent or ability or potential in the real world; all they care about is the appearance of these traits. People want things to be as they think they are, and they're willing to believe that things are as they perceive 'em to be.

How do you think that dippy girl in the first row with the incredibly short skirts and excellent boobs manages to get As and Bs when she can hardly tell you what page you're on? And what about the star halfback who needs help in finding his way to school every day? How does that ignorant clod manage to stay eligible for the team unless somebody's bending the rules for him somewhere? Everybody pays lip service to all the clichés about hard work and integrity and discipline and rewarding excellence and the rest of that crap, but watch how they deal with these things in their own lives.

We're a society of hypocrites and four-flushers and humbugs, and it will stand you in good stead if you know that early on. We don't reward excellence; we reward bullshit.

Make no mistake about it, though, your grades do count. A high HPA (honor point average) will have a lot to do with your futureÑor lack thereof. Colleges will depend largely on these HPAs when you apply for admission; in fact, a high HPA can do much to overcome poor SAT or ACT scores. In short, you know you need good grades but the question is, what can you do to assure yourself of coming up with 'em without actually turning into a nerd by studying and really learning something?

On the other hand, a low HPA will be decried by one and all and no major college or university will consider you. You'll be forced to enroll in a local barber college or one of those meat-cutting schools and forever be the object of scorn and derision to your peers. You'll be finished at eighteen, one of life's millions of losers before you really got started, and all because you didn't play by the rules of the game.

Those rules say you need a 3.0 or better HPA, so get it. No one cares how you get it, just see that you have it when you graduate. I've analyzed the problem and come up with some suggestions that will help you pull it off even if you're a less than auspicious student.

Take easy courses. Everybody knows you have to work your ass off to get a C in calculus, but you can get an A in wood shop just by learning how to identify two different pieces of lumber, for God's sake. And an A in wood shop is worth twice as many honor points as that C in calculus. Why, a guy who takes four years of wood shop could have an HPA of 4.0 and go to Harvard while the other guy taking hard courses like calculus could end up with an HPA of 2.2 and have to join the army just to get a job.

The jocks have known this for years, of course. They go through school taking the easiest courses available and every damn one of 'em goes on to our finest universities on scholarship. They stay in college long enough to play four years of football and then, forgetting all those years spent in phys ed classes and remedial English, file law suits against the school because they can't read. But that's the American way, isn't it?

And remember, who let's 'em get away with this crap? The very same people who are telling you we reward excellence, that's who. If you can come away with this one concept after reading this book, your money will have been well spent.

Whatever you do, avoid the so-called honors classes. At Cody, if we found out a student could read, we'd slap his ass into an honors course where the work is accelerated to challenge the better students. The poor bastard works like a beaver all semester and ends up with a C which could easily have been an A in a regular course. That's plain silly. While your friends are cruising through senior English with As, you're barely passing the honors classes they conned you into taking. And nobody cares that you took the honors classes; all they see is that glaring 2.2 HPA and somebody sticks a meat cleaver into your hand along with your diploma and points you in the direction of the nearest butcher shop.

Another gambit is to sign up for those classes taught by the "easy" teachers. Every school has hard teachers and easy ones; you want the easy ones. .Some teachers give kids credit just for showing up periodically while others demand college level work for a lousy C. Only a fool would prefer the latter. A perceptive kid can raise his HPA by at least fifty-percent merely by choosing his teachers with care.

Start asking questions as soon as you get to high school in your freshman year. Find out which teachers the jocks sign up with. Peek into the different classrooms on your way to the john and see what's going on. If everybody is bent over his desk and frowning and working his ass off you know that's a teacher to avoid. If, on the other hand, you look in and see paper airplanes sailing around and kids leaning out of the windows and the teacher idly thumbing through an old Playboy you know this is the class for you. Hurry down to your counselor and tell 'em you want a transfer to Mr. Slott's class at once.

Still another device is the old-fashioned con job. Make your teachers think you're something you aren't; trick 'em into believing you're a real student with pure motives and a love of learning for its own sake. Above all, let 'em think you're crazy about whatever it is they're teaching. All teachers are easily won over by kids who show an interest in their own specialty and tend to look on such kids with favor.

I know it's hard to wax enthusiastic over physics, but it will do you much good if you make the physics teacher believe you've loved the subject since you were a small child and have long planned a career in the field and so on. She'll feel kindly disposed toward you even when you can't grasp the basic fundamentals of the stuff and she'll want to give you the best possible grade. It never fails.

It works because it appeals to our vanity; it even worked on me. I remember one case where this little sharper showed up in my English class carrying a large unabridged dictionary and a bag full of novels, poetry, and sundry literary impedimenta. He took a seat right down front and stacked all these books on the floor where I could see 'em. He took great pains to let me know that he loved reading and wanted nothing more in life than to be an English teacher and even write books of his own.

Naturally, I took a shine to the little charlatan. I figured any kid who loved literature and fine writing as much as I did had to be all right. It turned out he didn't know any more about English than my cat, but he seemed such a well-meaning kid that I was reluctant to flunk him when he came up with a forty-six on the final and let him do some extra assignments to make it up.

The next semester I saw him in Corbin's history class. He was sitting right down front and had a complete set of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire stacked up next to his seat. I knew in a flash I'd been had, of course, but it was too late.

As I said, it works every time.

Anyway, using some of the above tactics could easily make a whole grade difference in a given courseÑand that means more honor points.

If you happen to be a comely female student with a male teacher, always sit down front and wear short skirts, the shorter the better. Undo four or five buttons on your blouse and lean over a lot. Let the old codger see enough thigh and boobs and he'll be too confused by the wonder of it all to know what the hell's going on. Every time he goes to grade one of your test papers his mind will be filled with boobs and thighs and he'll be compelled to raise that grade at least as high as you raised that skirt.

Trust me. This one works as well as anything I've discussed so far.

These are just a few traditional ways to get better grades in school, reliable schemes that have worked over the years, but they may not be enough to save you. I mean, if you do all these things and still have an HPA lower than sea level you'll have to come up with a better plan. And this brings us to still another time honored dodge used throughout Christendom for centuries: cheating.

Since we're concerned here with truth rather than moral balderdash and buncombe, let's take a close look at cheating generally and see what we're dealing with in the real world.

Of course, a lot of peopleÑmostly teachersÑthink students shouldn't cheat on their exams, and they have some good reasons for thinking so. For one thing, if you cheat too much you run the risk of ending up a total ignoramus, but that's a price you should be willing to pay for success in a world which cares for little else.

Others say you shouldn't cheat because it's dishonest, but this is the weakest argument of all. Everybody cheats, they just cheat at different things. We all pay the traditional lip service to honesty and strongly recommend itÑfor others. We teach kids that honesty is a highly desirable commodity in the world when nothing could be further from the truth.

Take another gander at that George Washington and the cherry tree bullshit. Here we have a patent lie routinely fed to little kids everywhere as a fact. It's an apocryphal story from beginning to end and everybody knows it. Washington never cut down any cherry tree with his little ax, and if he did he tried to cast suspicion on a nearby colony of beavers just as you or any sane person would in a similar situation. This base canard only serves to further reinforce my point: the hypocritical blackguards in the adult world even lie when they're trying to encourage honesty in their kids. The fact is most people have very little regard for honesty except when it benefits them. We all want to be honest ourselves as long as it isn't too inconvenient for us or our interests. And this includes your teachers.

How many of your teachers are thoroughly honest when they're trying to unload a used car on some poor unsuspecting sap? Or when they call in sick because they want to go shopping? Or when they report their taxes to the government? They'll lie and cheat in each of these cases and thousands more and still demand honesty and integrity from you.

That's bullshit. I think you should emulate your teachers in all things and do as they do. Look out for your own best interests just as everyone else is doing and you'll be a helluva lot better off for it.

Okay, now that we've examined the issue at great length and found the truth of the matter, let's get on with some tips on how to cheat successfully, raise your HPA, and finally gain admission to Yale or Princeton where all the big-time cheaters go.